


Always a Price

by SmurfetteAttheTacoBell



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Episode Tag, Gen, Introspection, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 18:31:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13393740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmurfetteAttheTacoBell/pseuds/SmurfetteAttheTacoBell
Summary: Peggy attends a funeral and wonders if she's walking the right path.





	Always a Price

**Author's Note:**

> An episode tag for 1x01 "Now is Not the End".

Steve never had a funeral. There was a memorial service of course, but no funeral. No body to bury and no grave to visit. A file in a dusty, dimly lit room in rarely visited area of the SSR is all Peggy has, but she can’t bloody well leave flowers in a filing cabinet.

Colleen has a funeral though. The drive was a bit far, and she missed the service but Peggy made sure to attend. Standing well away from the mourners in a stand of trees, wearing a dark green dress and a black hat with a veil to cover her face. She can’t be seen, she can’t be implicated, but she’s there. She owes it to Colleen to show her respects, to remember all of the people who died because she got too close to them.

She remembers kissing Steve goodbye. It had been flippant, flirtatious, with a hint of things to come. There’d been no time to say what she really thought. Her lips had not been able to properly communicate the depths of her feelings, but her eyes had held his and had spoken eloquently for her heart. Peggy hopes, anyway.

In some ways Colleen’s death was harder to take than Steve’s. Death had always been a risk in their game, that chance of rain on an otherwise sunny day. It was war and casualties were expected. They’d lost Bucky, after all. But Colleen was innocent, unsuspecting. Peggy had deceived her, lived a lie with a smile. There’s more guilt attached to her simple, needed dishonesty than to the bullet in Colleen’s head.

Peggy watches as the coffin is slowly lowered into the ground. A middle-aged woman sobs into the shoulder of the grey-haired man holding her- Colleen’s parents probably. Every tear is her fault and she feels it keenly. Peggy wonders if there is an end to the list of damages she has caused, or if they simply go on and on, ever-widening ripples in a pool.

Standing alone in the shadows of the trees, she thinks of Angie, Jarvis, Howard, Sousa—people she could hurt, let down, or lead to their death. She’s never quite learned _not_ to feel responsible for things. If the world needed to change she always thought she was the one to do it and there was no turning a blind eye to suffering or injustice. But her caring comes with a price tag, and she’s never been the one to pay. 

She thinks of what Jarvis said as they sat back-to-back in the Automat. One day she’ll know if her crusading really was worth the pain—hers and everyone else’s. If the lives saved outweigh the lives lost. Right now, standing in a cemetery watching a family that knows nothing of what led to their daughter’s death, the cost feels much too high. 

But perhaps the thing that brings the most shame, a thing she would scarcely admit to anyone, even Steve, is that given the choice she wouldn’t stop. Being an agent gives her the ability to stop evil, whether it be malevolent men like Red Skull or boorish ingrates like Krzeminski. Watching her friends die—having their blood on her hands, weighs heavy on her heart. But what would it do to her to remain silent?

Handfuls of dirt are being tossed into the grave now, the family dispersing. Straightening her shoulders, Peggy turns and leaves as well. She’ll look back and remember this day, she knows, if she ever lives to be old. And she knows that that version of her, the one that sees today in light of all the days after it, will still regret. But she thinks that if this entirely hypothetical person she could possibly turn out to be, would regret it more if she gave up now.

Peggy walks back to the bus stop, her stride as sure as ever, her chin lifted high. The red of her lipstick is stark and vivid against the pale of her skin and the dark of her eyes, and she looks nothing like a woman grieved. She has made her decision, chosen her course. Though there will be missteps and wrong turns, she has chosen her course for better or worse.

No matter what pain it may cause her along the way, Agent Peggy Carter will never give up her fight for justice. 


End file.
